TimeRiders

by Time Riders (epub)

  Foster worked over at the computer desk. Having scrubbed Bob’s neural processor clean of brain tissue and blood, he connected it up to the computer system and began downloading the entire content of its hard drive.

  ‘Bob’s AI is in there amongst that,’ he said, nodding towards the loading bar slowly creeping across the screen.

  ‘That’s a lot of data uploading there,’ said Maddy.

  ‘Well, he was away for nearly six months; all the time, his eyes and ears recording everything that was going on.’

  ‘So, what’s the deal with Bob? Is his AI intact?’

  Foster shrugged. ‘I’m no computer expert. So I don’t know how it works. But the code that makes up Bob’s AI will merge with the computer system’s.’ He tapped the keyboard. ‘You’ll be able to communicate with him in there.’

  ‘Right. Six months of learning… I guess that AI code’s a lot smarter than the idiot that plopped out of the birthing tube.’

  Foster chuckled. ‘Oh yes.’

  She looked at him. ‘How are we going to grow ourselves another support unit? Those tubes are smashed, the gunk they were growing in has all gone off –’

  He raised a hand. ‘There’s going to be a lot of work to do to get this field office online again.’

  ‘I’ll help you with that… You look tired.’ If she was being honest, she would have said he looked ready to keel over and die.

  ‘New clone embryos and growing solution. The generator needs replacing. The walls fixed up. You need to replenish our supplies,’ he added.

  ‘A new generator. That’s going to cost money.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Foster, ‘just go find a hardware store and buy another.’

  ‘We’ve got enough money?’

  ‘As much as you’ll ever need. It’s in a bank account.’

  ‘Cool. Do we get a debit card with that or something?’

  He turned to her. ‘That’s one of many things I’m going to need to go through with you… before…’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘Before what?’

  Foster looked uncomfortable. ‘Before I leave.’

  ‘Leave? Leave! You can’t leave us! Neither of us know what the heck we’re doing just yet. Jesus, I… I certainly don’t –’

  ‘You did fine.’ Foster smiled. ‘You did just fine. I’d say right now there’s no team better trained to do this than you. You survived the ordeal. You’ll be able to cope with pretty much anything else this job has to throw at you. Of that I’m sure.’

  ‘Team? There’s no team. There’s just me and Liam now.’ She cast a glance at the bank of monitors in front of her and the upload bar, now inching past the halfway mark. ‘Oh… and a computer system that’s very soon going to start insisting we call it Bob.’

  It was then they heard the soft scrape of feet behind them. They turned round to see Sal standing in the middle of the archway, a shopping bag in one hand, looking curiously down at the small crater of scooped-out concrete in the floor.

  ‘So what happened here? This place is a real mess,’ she said, shaking her head disapprovingly. ‘I go out for a couple of hours to get some milk and bagels for breakfast and come back and it’s like someone’s been drilling holes in the wall outside… and someone dropped a bowling ball on the floor here.’

  ‘Sal?’ Maddy’s jaw dropped. ‘Sal!’

  A dark eyebrow arched quizzically. ‘Uh… yeah, and?’

  ‘You’re alive!’ Maddy leaped up from the desk and swept the confused girl into her arms. ‘Oh my God, you’re alive! You’re alive!’

  Foster could see Sal’s bewildered face over Maddy’s shaking shoulder.

  ‘Uh… is someone going to tell me what’s been going on while I was out?’

  CHAPTER 92

  2001, New York

  Monday

  They haven’t told me everything that happened. I can tell some things went on that they’re keeping from me. But I know now that while I was out buying milk and bagels a time shift happened, the world changed and Liam and Bob went into the past to fix it.

  Liam told me he and Bob were actually stuck in the past for six whole months! And I know about none of it. Time travel is such a strange thing to get your head round.

  They said our field office was attacked, but no one’s told me by who or what yet. There are scratch marks everywhere on the wall outside, like someone took a scouring brush to the bricks. Maybe we were attacked by an army of porcupines or something.

  Many of the things in the back room were broken, shards of glass and stuff everywhere, so I guess there was a bit of a struggle back there. I wish they’d just tell me everything instead of trying to ‘protect’ me just ’cause I’m the youngest.

  And Bob died. I know that’s affected Liam. He’s missing him. I see him typing to Bob on the computer system every day. Maddy tells him not to be so cut up about it – he’s not actually ‘gone’; he’s just in the computer instead. She said it’s no different to, like, chatting to a friend on MSN.

  I miss the big guy too.

  Foster says we can grow another Bob once the birthing equipment has been sorted out. I’m not sure how I’ll feel, though, about a Bob Version 2. It just won’t be the same Bob. Or will it? I mean, they’re clones, so I suppose it will be exactly the same.

  Maddy’s been kept very busy. Foster says she’s the team leader and needs to do a lot of learning while we rest up and recover. The birthing tubes in the back room have got to be replaced, and we’ll need new cloned foetuses and supplies of that gooey soup they float in. Foster’s getting Maddy to sort out those things. We also have to get a new back-up generator installed to replace the old one and supplies of food and water and diesel and so many other things.

  We’re all going to be kept busy for the next few days, that’s for sure.

  You know, I hate that I completely missed out on whatever happened. I feel like I’m still the newbie here and the other two are now sort of like old hands.

  In fact, all three of them seem a bit different, like what happened changed them somehow. Like, for example, Liam. He’s sort of older now. I swear he’s grown an inch or two taller. He seems bigger, firmer. Less boyish and a bit more manly. Obviously he’s six months older than he was… but it’s actually like he’s two or three years older. It’s weird.

  Maddy jokes around a little less now. She seems to have so much on her mind all the time… like she’s about to sit a whole load of exams and she hasn’t done any revision.

  And then there’s Foster.

  I worry about him. He looks so-o-o-o sick and so-o-o-o much older. Coming back from my shopping trip, it was like he’d sort of aged a hundred years in the time that I was out. I figured it would be rude to blurt something out about how he looked really old all of a sudden. So I haven’t said anything about it these last few days. I guess it’s a time-travel thing.

  So incredibly weird, though, this time-travel business. It really messes with your head.

  Sal looked up from writing her diary and slurped a spoon from her breakfast bowl of Rice Krispies. The cereal had gone soggy in the milk as she’d been scribbling away. She stared disinterestedly at one of the banks of computer monitors in front of her. She’d tuned the signal feed from CNN to the Disney channel, and right now Toy Story 2 was on – Buzz and gang desperately trying to cross a busy highway disguised as traffic cones. Sal had seen it many times over. It had been one of her dad’s favourites.

  The arch is quiet right now. Liam is on his bunk, his nose stuck in a history book all about the Second World War. He does a lot of reading. Says he never ever wants to be stuck again in a time he knows nothing about.

  Maddy and Foster went
out earlier. He told her he had a number of things to discuss with her ‘confidentially’. I don’t like that. That there are things he’s telling her and not me and Liam. It doesn’t seem fair. After all, we’re a team, aren’t we?

  Sal had watched them both step out under the open shutter door a couple of hours ago. Foster had waved a goodbye. But there was something about the way he’d done that, a rueful smile as he’d surveyed the scruffy place.

  In fact, the old man had been acting very oddly these last few days. She wondered if it was because he was tired. Foster seemed to have too much on his shoulders, too much to do. She decided, when they returned, she’d insist he sit back in one of the tatty old armchairs they had around the table, put his feet up and she’d make a fuss of him. Make him some coffee, some beans on toast. Whatever he wanted.

  He looked like he could do with some TLC.

  CHAPTER 93

  2001, New York

  ‘So,’ said Foster eventually, ‘so now you know everything you need to know, Madelaine. Everything.’

  Maddy stared back across the table at him. It was mid-morning, and Starbucks was relatively quiet. The morning rush for take-away lattes and frappucinos had been and gone and now the coffee shop was half empty.

  ‘And now you know why I’m dying. Why I can’t risk riding time any more. Why I can’t live in the field office’s time bubble any more…’

  ‘You’re sure?’ She looked at him. ‘You’re sure the technology is killing you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘The damage it does builds up slowly over time. You don’t notice it at first, but it catches up on you really fast eventually. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to live outside the bubble, but it’ll be longer than if I remain inside with you.’

  ‘If you did stay?’

  ‘Stayed with you… inside?’ He shrugged. ‘It’s hard to tell. Maybe I’d live on a few more days, a week or two at most.’ He sighed. ‘It’s not an exact science. And I’m no doctor.’

  Maddy bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ He smiled weakly. ‘It goes with being an operative. I was told early on, when I first started out and I was a fit, young lad, that being a TimeRider would eventually kill me.’

  ‘But you carried on regardless?’

  ‘Given all the wonderful history I’ve seen, Maddy, all the history I’ve touched, smelled, tasted, all the experiences I’ve had, the things I’ve learned? Jesus… I’d do it all again. I really would.’

  ‘You were given the same choice that you gave us? Join up or go back and face your predestined death?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘and I don’t regret a moment of it.’

  ‘So, what about Liam?’

  Foster pursed his lips in thought, then eventually, reluctantly, he nodded. ‘Yes, I’m afraid Liam will end up like this. Time travel will age him faster than you or Sal. Time travel will sooner or later kill him… riddle his body with cancers.’

  She shook her head and looked down at her coffee and her muffin; all of a sudden she had no appetite for either.

  Poor, poor Liam.

  It was going to be down to her, as the team leader, to tell him some time, to let him know each occasion he stepped through a displacement window and was sent back into the past that the cells of his body were going to become more and more corrupted, until finally they turned on themselves and became tumours that would eventually eat him up from the inside.

  ‘So,’ she said after a while, ‘where will you go?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘I guess I wouldn’t mind feeling the sun on my face whilst I enjoy a good hotdog.’ He grinned. ‘Make the most of whatever time I’ve got left.’

  ‘Will you stay in New York?’

  ‘They say it’s the city that never sleeps… and, as somebody once told me, you can do all the sleeping you want when you’re dead. So I guess New York’s the place for me.’

  They both laughed. A dry, sad noise that filled the space between them.

  He finished the last of his coffee. ‘Anyway, it was always my plan to visit New York and see the sights. I just got waylaid for a little while.’

  He reached for a bag at his feet, a small overnight bag with a few personal keepsakes and mementoes.

  ‘Foster, wait,’ said Maddy. ‘I’m not sure I can do this. I’m not sure we’re ready to cope on our own.’

  ‘You’re more than ready. I know you’ll make a great team.’

  ‘How can you know? There’s still so much we need to –’

  ‘I know,’ he said firmly as he rose from his seat slowly, painfully, grimacing wearily from the effort.

  ‘Will we see you again?’

  ‘You have all the information you need, Maddy. It’s there in your head, in what I’ve told you, what you’ve learned, what you’ve experienced. Anything you don’t know… Well, there are notes on the computer’s database, answers to all the questions you’re ever likely to ask.’

  ‘How do you know what I’m going to ask?’

  He winked. ‘This is time travel, Maddy; what goes around, comes around.’

  She cocked her head, confused by his cryptic answer. ‘Yes, but if I needed your help… could I find you out here somewhere?’

  His frail, liver-spotted old hand squeezed her shoulder lightly. ‘You’ll do just fine, Maddy, so you will.’

  He turned away and shuffled towards the glass front of the coffee shop with his overnight bag slung over one shoulder. He looked like the world’s oldest traveller, pulling the door open and stepping out on to the busy Manhattan pavement. She stifled an urge to call out, to chase after him and beg him to stay on a while longer with them.

  But then he was gone from view, lost amid the busy pavement traffic. For a while she watched the bustling street outside, pondering all the things Foster had told her. Wondering how much of that information she ought to share with the others, how much of it was best she keep to herself. Already she was beginning to feel the burden of responsibility settling all too heavily on her narrow shoulders.

  ‘Top you up?’

  Maddy looked up at the Starbucks waitress standing beside her booth holding a decanter of steaming coffee in her hand. A girl the same age as her. For a moment she wondered what troublesome dilemmas kept her tossing and turning at night…

  … Go skating with Sheena and Kayisha tomorrow? Should I accept Danny’s invitation to Jimmy’s house party? Or shall I go out with Stevie instead? Should I do an overtime shift Tuesday or shall I make it Wednesday?…

  ‘Top you up?’

  Maddy nodded, distracted. ‘Sure… yeah, please, fill me up.’

  The waitress poured till the cup was filled and she moved on to the next booth to ask the same question.

  Maddy watched her go, envious of what she supposed was an untroubled life of petty decisions. She realized right then that if she could wave a magic wand and swap places with the waitress – she could pour coffee and Miss Starbucks Waitress could go and worry about keeping history the way it is – she’d do it in a heartbeat.

  But, she realized, rubbing her tired eyes and thinking she needed to get a new pair of specs, someone’s got to do it, you know? Someone’s got to keep an eye on the time.